Left: Viana and other parking enforcement officers will be kept busier with the city's new policy of charging for parking at meters from noon to 6 p.m. Sundays, designed to encourage turnover.

Left: Viana and other parking enforcement officers will be kept busier with the city's new policy of charging for parking at meters from noon to 6 p.m. Sundays, designed to encourage turnover.

Photo: Sean Havey

SF parking meters need to be fed Sundays

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Pull out the quarters and the credit cards. After a 65-year grace period, San Francisco motorists will have to dig deep on Sunday to feed the city's 29,000 parking meters.

Since the city's first meter was installed at Bush and Polk streets on Aug. 21, 1947, drivers could spend Sundays in the city without having to worry about carrying a pocketful of change and hustling back to their cars before the bright red "Expired" sign clicked into view.

"Back in the 1940s, most businesses were closed on Sundays, so there was no need for metering," he said. "But now it's just like a Saturday, with businesses open and plenty of traffic."

Charging for parking at meters on Sunday is a way of easing congestion in the city, Rose added, and will make life better for both drivers, who will have an easier time finding parking places, and merchants, who need the regular turnover of parking to allow customers to get to their shops, restaurants and offices.

"Parking management" is a catchphrase at MTA, which oversees virtually every mode of transportation in the city, from Muni and taxis to bikes and walking. While the city collects about $47 million a year from parking meters (and another $87 million from parking fines), transit officials downplay any fiscal benefits that the Sunday meters and other changes in parking rules will bring the financially strapped transit agency.

The Sunday meters will only generate about $1 million by June 30, the end of the fiscal year and $2 million over the following 12 months, Rose said.

"This isn't meant to be a revenue program, it's meant to improve parking management throughout the city," he added.

Revenue needed

But the money definitely matters.

The need to improve maintenance and on-time reliability for the transit system, along with the new cost of providing free Muni passes for low-income youths, does mean more revenue is needed, MTA chief Ed Reiskin said in March when the Sunday meter plan was laid out.

Rather than boosting fares or cutting service, Reiskin decided that the best way to raise the needed money - and promote the city's long-standing Transit First policy - was "to modernize our antiquated parking policies."

Not everyone agrees. Religious groups throughout the city have complained that the prospect of paying between $2 and $5.25 an hour to park could put a dent in church attendance.

Many churches have late services and a variety of after-service activities, including free lunch and dinner programs and other efforts designed to help the down-and-out in the city, said Michael Pappas, executive director of the Interfaith Council of San Francisco, which represents congregations across the city.

"The city is telling volunteers that they have to feed the meter to serve the poor," he said.

The transit agency has worked with church groups to ease some of the pain. The meters will be active only from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays, and motorists will be able to pay for up to four hours at a time. The city's high-tech smart meters also will be adjusted to allow people to feed the meters early on Sunday morning, even though the charges won't start until noon.

For the first three weeks of Sunday metering, violators also will get warnings rather than citations, with the hope that the dreaded sight of paper tickets flapping on the windshield will be an effective reminder 0f the change.

Despite their unhappiness, congregations are working to spread the word about the meters, Pappas said, because no priest, minister or rabbi wants to see a congregant slapped with a $72 parking ticket.

Wharf always charged

While people have long been paying to park seven days a week at Fishermen's Wharf and at Port of San Francisco-owned property along the Embarcadero, the Board of Supervisors and disgruntled residents in the past have always managed to block the Sunday meter charges in the rest of the city.

But when Mayor Ed Lee signed on to the transit agency's request, the end to free Sundays was in sight, especially since cities like Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago already have taken that route.

It was a matter of balance, the mayor said, finding the best and fairest way to provide the transit system with the money it needs to operate.

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